How is it that on German television, at 6 pm, two young men still unsure of their feelings for each other can have sex, while on American television a couple that has been dating for over half a year still haven’t consummated their relationship and recently went six months without even kissing?

That’s what fans of As the World Turns have wondered ever since they were introduced to Christian and Olli, a same-sex couple from the German soap opera Verbotene Liebe (Forbidden Love). When clips of the show’s gay storyline started popping up online, American viewers reacted with unbridled enthusiasm to a show that not only didn’t hesitate to show same-sex affection, but allowed its gay characters’ storylines the same prominence as the heterosexual ones.

Even better, the gay storyline unfolded at a much more rapid pace than American viewers were used to with their programs, which until very recently frequently treated gay content with kid gloves for fear of offending advertisers.

Indeed, watching clips of Christian and Olli being intimate only fueled the frustration many viewers felt with the Luke and Noah storyline on As the World Turns.

So what is this German soap opera of which U.S. fans have become so enamored?

Forbidden Love, set in Düsseldorf, Germany, is actually a remake of an Australian soap called Sons and Daughters. Premiering in Germany in January of 1995, the program initially focused on the Brandners and von Anstettens, who are still the show’s core families.

In the show’s very first storyline, Julia von Anstetten and Jan Brandner meet randomly at an airport and are instantly attracted to each other even though he is a simple boy from a working-class family and she is a rich and spoiled brat. After falling in love, they eventually learn the unfortunate truth that they are, in fact, twins; hence, the title Forbidden Love.

Eventually, Jan and Julia left the show, replaced by other characters and storylines including that of the same-sex couple Oliver and Christian, who are officially dating as of the April 4 episode. But that wasn’t the first time they actually slept together (that happy event occurred back on March 17). And their first of many kisses – Olli taking Christian by surprise in the locker room of Christian’s boxing club – occurred in January of this year.

As stated above, Forbidden Love is definitely not As the World Turns.

What may strike American television viewers as remarkable simply isn’t particularly noteworthy in Germany. Such wasn’t always the case: What is generally (and falsely) considered the first gay kiss on a German show took place in 1990 on the weekly soap opera Lindenstrasse and resulted in murder threats for the actors involved. (There was actually a brief gay kiss on the same show in 1987, but it was so quick as to apparently not register to most viewers.)

But just a few years later, the 1994 German comedy Der Bewegte Mann (Maybe…Maybe Not), about a straight man moving in with a gay man, was a box office smash in Germany. Suddenly, being gay on the big or small screen was no longer such a big deal.

Ever since, gay characters have appeared on numerous German shows with little fanfare. There have been gay storylines on Marienhof, Alles Was Zählt (All that Matters), as well as Forbidden Love. None of them have been greeted with threats of boycotts such as those threatened in the U.S. by the American Family Association.

The greater acceptance of gay storylines on German television no doubt has to do with Germany’s – and Europe’s – greater tolerance of homosexuality and comfort with sexual situations in general. In Germany, it is violence that is considered more troubling than same-sex love or nudity. That allows German writers to have a freer hand with the gay storylines on shows such as Forbidden Love.